Ryan Gosling reflects on working with Malick, directing and that Oscar flub
Even amid the chaotic melee on the Dolby Theatre stage during the infamous best-picture Oscar flub, Ryan Gosling was typically unflappable. While most reacted with shock and confusion, there was the "La La Land" star - cool and bemused - chuckling on the side of the stage.
"What can you say?" Gosling said in a phone interview. "I was very happy for 'Moonlight' at the same time. It's such a wonderful film."
It takes a lot to rattle Gosling. But making Terrence Malick's largely improvised "Song to Song," the 36-year-old actor grants, was like working "without a net." Gosling stars in the film alongside Michael Fassbender and Rooney Mara. It's broadly speaking a love triangle set against the music scene of Austin, Texas, but plot describes only so much in a Malick movie.
Gosling is currently readying for another film with "La La Land" director Damien Chazelle, in which he'll play astronaut Neil Armstrong. And he stars in this fall's sci-fi sequel "Blade Runner 2049." But his experience on "Song to Song," shot all the way back in 2012, is still powerful for him.
Q. How did Malick approach you?
A. It was just: Would you be interested in working without a script? I said sure. A little more than a year later, he asked me to come out to Austin. They were doing some kind of preliminary shooting at one of the music fests out there. The idea was that he wanted to try to cause what he called "collisions" between a narrative film and this music scene in Austin, to take these scenes into real environments that you couldn't control and see what happened.
Q. What was the atmosphere like while shooting in Austin during a festival?
A. My job was to try to encourage passersby on the street - non-actors, musicians, people in the crowd - to come into the world of the movie and take the scene where they wanted to take it and to try to keep in the world in the movie. To try to keep them from looking into the camera, to try to make them address me as not an actor but as a fellow concertgoer or whatever the situation required. It was very different than just playing a character.
Q. It sounds like a challenging process, but you, Fassbender and Mara often exude such joyfulness in the movie.
A. We would basically travel in a van together with a small group of people. You would just hop out and play out the general idea of the scene in a certain location, and then hop in a van and look for another location to do the scene in. We spent most of our days that way. A lot of days you felt like you weren't able to get something that Terry was looking for, because he's looking for something beyond the scene. You just have to be ready for when it happens. We did kind of hit a wall at a certain point and Terry said, "Let's just go to Mexico." So the next day, we picked up and went to Mexico.
Q. Fassbender's chimpanzee impression on the Mexican beach was impressive.
A. He does an incredible chimpanzee.
Q. You directed "Lost River," a highly personal Detroit-set fairy tale, shortly after making "Song to Song." Was Malick an inspiration?
A. He would give me the camera almost every day and have me shoot something. It was great for me just to be having that practice knowing I was about to go make a film on my own. He doesn't place a lot of importance on the rituals that most people in the industry kind of depend upon: continuity, linear storytelling, traditional coverage, a script, hair, make-up, wardrobe, location. In some cases, he refers to them as cinderblocks holding you down. Obviously that doesn't work for every film, but it's very helpful to see from that perspective to sort of demystify the importance of all those things.